Individual Research

  1. Ask your teachers and local historians for:

  2. Research the local newspapers and other publications for:

    You might target important events and dates, using the text, timeline and other secondary sources as a guide.

  3. Research the topic on the Internet. A search for women's organisations in Ireland or on the history of women in the UK and the USA in particular, will result in a large amount of material.
  4. Facts and statistics may be accessed on the Internet websites of government departments, the EU, the UN, etc.
  5. Older women and men may have interesting stories, experiences and attitudes to share with you.
  6. Collect old letters, diaries, messages, photographs, membership forms, newspaper clippings, etc. and make a display for the public.
  7. Collect relevant local stories, novels, songs, ballads, photographs, pictures, drawings, etc. and publish or display your findings.
  8. A directory of sources for women's history in Ireland is an essential means of accessing primary sources for the history of women in Ireland. It contains information and descriptions of over 14,000 collections and 262 repositories. It is also available on CD ROM.

It was compiled as the result of a survey of public and private repositories in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland between 1997 and 1999.

What became so obvious from our surveys was that women were to be found in almost all official, public and private documents. They are spoken of in institutional records such as the minutes of a poor law board or the committal forms of a nineteenth-century lunatic asylum. They recorded the functionings of their convents, institutions and landed estates in finance ledgers, reports and correspondence; they were affected by the financial constraints imposed by local authorities such as county councils; they were tenants whose payments were noted in thousands of rentals.
Women also recorded their personal lives in letters, diaries, journals and common place books; they painted, stitched, embroidered and wrote plays, poems, music and novels. All of these sources and more are listed in this Directory.
A directory of sources for women's history in Ireland, Dublin, 2000.
  1. The Field Day anthology of Irish writing, Vols. IV & V: Irish women's writing and traditions is a comprehensive collection of texts written and spoken by and about women from the very earliest manuscripts down to the present day. It contains a wealth of primary sources and with scholarly introductions on the one hand and detailed notes on the other hand, is approachable by all.

    Field Day anthology of Irish writing, Vols. IV & V: Irish women's writing and traditions,     Cork, 2002.
  2. Use the website Genesis to research the history of women more widely.
  3. Publish and/or exhibit your findings. Some of the information you find may be very important or it may be interesting or colourful but if you do not publish it in some way, it may be lost for ever, so do consider a publication, an exhibition or a performance.
contents index